Eagles and Blackbirds and Real Birds, Oh My

 Jeremy is a bird eater, a one eyed, one horned, flying purple birdy eater.

 

O.K. This is what happens when I get started on a post but don't have time to continue blogging. My kids step in and... well, you saw the first line of this post.

 

What I was going to say was Jeremy had a balloon gig coming up where he was building a jet based on one that actually existed so as a family, we went up to Hill Aerospace Museum to see it. 

Research!

 

Here's the story: Back in the 60's, that's 1960s, Murray City acquired a retired jet, a Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star. Do you want to know what they did with it? They turned it into a slide. Yep, a playground slide at Murray Park, where kids could climb up one side and slide down the other. Around 1990, it was retired as a slide and taken to Hill Air Force Base. It was repainted (and whatever else needed to be done) and hung in the Hadley Gallery of the Hill Aerospace Museum. Ta-da. So we went to see the real jet and later Jeremy (and Debbie) built it out of balloons.

 

Here's the real thing:

 

Here is the balloon jet: 

 

Here is an informational poster they had at the event:

 

And here is our family at the Hill Aerospace Museum: 

It was a nice family activity. I loved seeing Jet with the jets. Tee Hee. I told the kids that the last time I went to this museum was when I was a little girl myself. One or two of our kids had visited for youth activities but this was the first time as a whole family.

We saw lots and lots of aircraft and Jet and Lucky both picked out pennies to squish. Jet's was an Eagle and Lucky's was a Blackbird. We made sure to get pictures of them with their pennies with their aircraft.

 

After we got home, a few of us went down to Utah Lake State Park to see real birds. It was a windy day, a wonderfully windy day. It was so fun to see waves flying up onto the rocks while we were there. So fun.

Lucky especially loved it.

We saw some birds, too. 

It was a long, busy, but good day.